Greka may have to deal with state authorities

By COLBY FRAZIER — July 10, 2009

Greka Energy’s long list of oil spills in Santa Barbara County has spurred a number of actions, including tightened laws to deal with inland polluters at the state and county levels.

But today, the oil company that owns dozens of aging wells and other infrastructure here, made the agenda of the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, which will decide if Greka should be prosecuted for its rocky environmental record by the California Attorney General.

The Board’s staff, citing 24 Greka oil spills since 2002 that spewed 180,000 gallons of pollutants into state or federal waterways, urges the Board in a staff report to let Greka be dealt with by state prosecutors.

“Because of Greka’s long history of illicit discharges of waste throughout the entire tenure of its operations in the Central Coast region, and because of its consistent and repetitive failure to take the necessary actions to prevent those discharges, staff believes a higher civil liability than could be imposed administratively by the Water Board is warranted in this case,” the staff report says.

The Board’s staff appears to base much of its rationale for recommending this action on the ability of courts to levy stiff financial penalties against Greka.

According to the staff report, the court could fine Greka as much as $15,000 per day for a spill, while the Water Board is only able to charge $5,000.

The Staff report goes on to say that because Greka is a multi-million dollar corporation, increased civil liability penalty is needed to “specifically deter it from continuing to cause illicit discharges and to encourage it to take the necessary steps and incur the necessary expenses to prevent future spills.”

Andrew deVegvar, president of Greka, said he welcomes review by the Attorney General.

“We’re more than happy to have this recommended to the Attorney General because we think in that venue it will be proved that there isn’t much to this,” he said. “I think there will be a positive resolution to this.”

DeVegvar acknowledged his company has been responsible for spills, but continues to maintain, “99 percent have been very minor and they’ve been on private property and have not done any environmental damage.”

While Greka had a long record of smaller spills prior to 2007, it was toward the latter part of that year that the company was thrust into the spotlight as one of this state’s most pervasive inland polluters.

One spill in December of 2007 totaled 33,600 gallons, much of which was crude oil. While regulators were grappling with this incident, Greka spilled again less than a month later. Only this spill was bigger, topping out around 84,000 gallons. Both of these spills were at Greka’s North County properties.

But these were just the big ones. And if Greka is prosecuted by the Attorney General, it will only be for those spills that reached waterways, which, by some estimates, account for just over half of the spills the company is responsible for.

DeVegvar said the company has been unfairly targeted by politicians seeking personal gain.

As a result, he said a “new standard” was set for regulating Greka oil fields that, with forced closures of some of its facilities, “debilitated us.”

While deVegvar complains about stricter regulations, he insists Greka’s facilities are in better shape now than they were two years ago, and a number of measures have been taken, like 24-hour staffing, and construction of earthen berms near creek beds, to prevent spills.

“Our fields are in much, much better shape than they’ve ever been before,” he said.

It appears the same improvements deVegvar touts as evidence that the company is on its way to being a sterling member of the community were brought on, at least partially, by the criticism surrounding the company.

Nevertheless, deVegvar feels Greka has been wronged, despite, according to county records, being responsible for roughly 77.5 percent of all of the inland oil spills here between 2003 and 2007.

And, even without larger spills like those at the end of 2007 and early 2008, Greka appears to still be leading the pack when it comes to spilling. In the last quarter of 2008, Greka was responsible for 10 of the 17 oil spills documented by regulators, county documents show.

Through it all, one of the most vocal critics of Greka has been Assemblyman Pedro Nava, who, spurred by the spate of Greka spills, authored two new laws that gave state regulators, among other things, the authority to shut chronic polluters down,

Nava, who has announced plans to seek the office of Attorney General in 2010, urged the Water Board to send Greka and its spill-plagued record to state authorities.

“This action is long overdue,” he said in a prepared statement. “Greka is one of the worst polluters in California. They must be held accountable and forced to clean up their act.”

The Water Board meeting starts at 8:30 a.m. and is being held in Watsonville.

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